


These Twisted Tongues Tighten Tensions

by OldEmeraldEye



Series: Last Seen In Gotham [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Crossover Pairings, Dawn eats Riddler's puzzles for breakfast, F/F, Onesided Rivalry, Relationship is not the focus of the story, and does Gotham PD's job for them, and gets paid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-28 07:37:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19807699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldEmeraldEye/pseuds/OldEmeraldEye
Summary: Dawn is not a fan of the Riddler, nor most of Gotham’s villain gallery. It’s a professional thing. He’s even less fond of what little he knows about her.





	These Twisted Tongues Tighten Tensions

Dawn has been cracking prophecies open almost the entire time that she’s been alive. Some of them were written figuratively, in code, on top of being Sumerian.

Compared to a background like that, the nack of getting inside the Riddler’s mind is easy. Not that he can help the fact that there is only a bare handful of museums for him to ... well to be honest Dawn isn’t exactly sure what he was planning, but she’s been in Gotham long enough to know it was either a threat or a hideout claim or some form of theft. (Although why he’d want to announce he was planning to steal something Dawn did not know. Maybe the dessert in Arkham was really good or something?)

It’s not like Dawn’s attached to the buildings in question, with the exception of the Gotham Museum of Art, which has really nice couches for a public building, but other people get caught in the crossfire – the sort that are in museums because they’re museums. Saving the world isn’t Dawn's job, but letting kids get hurt is not her job either. It shouldn’t be anyone’s.

Dawn only gives up on the cop’s slow progress twice and calls in a tip to their headquarters’ phone line before Selina catches on and straightens her out.

It’s not the best paying job around – that would involve museums or being Bruce Wayne – but with Arkham’s revolving door policy, it’s steady enough pay, enough to fund Dawn's culinary experimentation and leave a bit on the side for when the heating breaks down. Ivy’s citrus vines really like her spicy meatloaf with pineapple. Selina, not so much.

Nice as it is to have a new, semi-regular stream of income (for something she does, and would probably do, anyway) Dawn is supremely disinterested in acquiring a villainous rival. That sort of thing was for her sister and her posse of slayerettes. Unfortunately, she wasn’t consulted about it. Rather, she has been consulting, and the nature of her work brought her to the attention of one of Gotham’s more recognizable showpieces.

Everyone who arrived in town knew of the Bat, and Dawn herself lived with a certain Cat, if clandestinely, but the Riddler was right up there with the Joker for flashy, eye-catching visibility. He was on posters and other touristy knickknacks and everything.

And he isn’t pleased with the increased efficiency she adds to the official response to his acts, or the reduced time he gets to complete whatever his plot of the week is. (Strangely enough, it’s never world end-age in Gotham.) Dawn, if she looks at it from his perspective, can see how that might be a bit annoying. But only a bit.

The neon green paint pattern, when Dawn gets to see it, is fairly unambiguous for one of Riddler messages, but in his defense it is hard to hijack the public broadcast from within Arkham. The way that the Batlight – Batlantern? Dawn’s never been bothered enough to learn what it’s called – projects it onto the clouds for all of downtown to see is a nice touch. Very theoretical.

It’s a good thing Gotham’s general background level craziness is enough that by the end of the week the message has become nothing but another brief incident for everyone else, and it messes with mystical tracing, because if it wasn’t Dawn would be on the first bus out that didn’t have a suspicious amount of sprinklers installed. Burglary was universal. Selina could adjust to life just about anywhere. Without that, a personal feud – even if technically it was with Aurora Samhradh instead of Dawn Summers – would beat a dozen vague attempts by various organizations and lone wolves to get at the Slayer or the new Council through her innocent, defenseless, gullible baby sister or even that one group in Colorado making noise about the key to some ancient technology. Half of it isn’t even hostile, just annoying.


End file.
